Article Title

Authors

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assist in the development of transit fare policies that exploit the benefits of public transit in the mix of transportation options for Washington State. The study relates fares to ridership performance, fare-box recovery, and system utilization.

Ridership efficiency, a measure of transit performance, is estimated for 24 State transit systems. A mathematical model is developed that relates fares to ridership efficiency. The ridership efficiency function follows the complement of a cumulative normal probability distribution. The tail of the distribution is reached at $0.95. Higher fares have little impact on ridership efficiency. An operating cost model to estimate the fare-box recovery and operating cost subsidy is developed. Ridership, fare-box recovery, and system utilization estimates are made for selected transit systems.